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Carl Brady: On the limits of the wind and the security of nuclear power

By Carl Brady

Posted:
11/07/2018 09:38:44 PM MST

Updated:
11/07/2018 09:39:28 PM MST

I recently wrote a piece in the Times-Call regarding the deficiencies of wind turbines, noting that they must have back-up power sources to keep the grid stable because of the intermittent nature of the wind. Dr. Rick Jacobi, in a recent opinion piece of his own, has taken issue with that, saying essentially that if the wind stops blowing in one place, it must be blowing somewhere else and the power grid will bring that wind energy to where it is needed. This concept has not worked out in practice. Long distance high voltage transmission grids are not appropriately interconnected in most countries for this to be possible. Australia tried it with about a 1,500-mile interconnected grid, and it did not work. So instead, power companies are still stuck with using back-up power sources, usually gas turbines or coal plants, that ramp up or down to keep the grid stable.

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The rest of Dr. Jacobi's submittal appears to be the approach often used by those without depth to their arguments; that is, to throw as much manure at the wall as possible in the hope that some of it will stick. Therefore, I will not waste time nor space in detailed responses to the items mentioned. Besides, I have already addressed most of them in previous submissions to the Times-Call over the last several years. I will note that had the politicians allowed the recycling approach to be followed that was originally intended for used nuclear reactor fuel cells, there would be only a small fraction of the waste that now exists and almost none of the extremely long-lived isotopes that worry Dr. Jacobi. Or, if those same politicians had not halted the development of the Integral Fast Reactor back in the 1990s, it could have disposed of the existing nuclear waste as fuel. As to the safety of nuclear power, I will only point out that the U.S. Navy Nuclear Power program, which I happened to be a part of at one time in my life, has safely operated literally hundreds of nuclear reactors since the 1950s.

I also will not attempt to defend Dr. Lindzen; his accomplishments speak for themselves. Nor for the many other climate scientists, especially in academia, that have had the courage to speak out on this issue. Those like Dr. Judith Curry, the former chairman of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech. Or, like Dr. Roger A. Pielke Jr., a professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Both Dr. Curry and Dr. Pielke were subjected to devastating personal attacks when they dared to question the climate orthodoxy. Their fellow academics and administrators feared the loss of the billions of dollars of government money pouring into colleges and universities for so-called climate research should the hysteria subside.

Finally, I find it quite astonishing that anyone in Dr. Jacobi's chosen profession would deride the industrial revolution or the engineering profession without which most of the advances in modern medicine would not have been possible. Without them, most the medicines prescribed by Dr. Jacobi and his colleagues could not have been developed nor manufactured. Nor could all of the marvelous diagnostic equipment used daily in hospitals and medical offices. And, what of the power to drive all of this equipment? It would not exist without the fossil-fueled power plants. And then there's the diesel engines which he seems to have particular contempt for. I would venture to guess that there's not a single hospital across our country that doesn't have a diesel powered generator sitting somewhere on site to provide emergency power when power from the grid goes out. Perhaps, Dr. Jacobi would be so kind as to inform all of us the next time he sees a windmill sitting beside a hospital used for that purpose.

Carl Brady is a retired engineer who has been a resident of Frederick about 13 years.

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